Mayday's Hero
by betty brant
Summary: Movieverse AU. Mayday Parker wishes she could meet SpiderMan. Alternating Mayday and Peter Parker POVs. Complete!
1. Chapter 1: Little Girl's World

**Mayday's Hero**

Part I of V

Description: Movieverse (AU). Mayday Parker wishes she could meet Spider-Man. (Alternating Mayday and Peter Parker POVs).

_Disclaimer: Spider-Man, Mayday Parker (a.k.a Spider-Girl), and pretty much everything else in this story (except for perhaps a few of Mayday's little friends) belong to Marvel. This story about them is for fun, not profit. It's also more than a little silly. Serious comics fans might prefer to avoid it, but, to those who like fluff, enjoy!_

_A/N: This story is a "What If?" story. What if Baby May had lived? (Grrrr...) What if, while she was growing up, Peter was still running around trying be Spider-Man, trying to hold down a serious job, trying to be a father as well as a husband, while various horrors continually interrupt his life? What if, in addition to all of that, Mayday's biggest hero was Spider-Man? _

_Oh yes, and it's set in the movieverse – not because I have anything against the comics, but I don't know them all that well, and I have seen the movies._

_Thank you to jjonahjameson for excellent hints about this chapter, suggestions for ways to make the children's voices sound more authentic and advice about the story as a whole._

"I'm Spider-Man!" shouted Travis, clinging to the monkey bars with only one hand and swinging himself back and forth. _Show off_, thought Mayday Parker irritably.

As he swung, his lanky brown hair fell into his eyes. Impatiently, he pushed it away with his free hand and then, as the sudden movement caused him to lose momentum, he hastily used that hand to grab back onto a rung overhead, in order to keep himself from falling to the ground below.

Mayday chuckled a little at that because he _was_ a funny sight, hanging there white-knuckled, with his messy hair still falling in his eyes despite his best efforts. Travis's hair was always messy and his bangs were always just a bit too long. In contrast, Mayday's hair was usually brushed to a glossy sheen by either her mom or Aunt May, who then would put it in the long, straight red ponytail which habitually hung down her back.

"No, I am," said Mayday emphatically. "I can climb the highest." And to prove it she threw a leg over the rung she was holding onto and heaved herself up through the nearest space and over the top of the structure. She crawled nimbly up the side of it until she reached the curving top of the metallic dome. Then, ever so slowly, she spread her feet apart and straightened, until she was standing tall, surveying the playground like a Queen.

It was true, she could climb the highest – and she often did.

"You can't be Spider-Man," said Travis scornfully from somewhere beneath her, "Because you're a girl."

"She can too," argued another girl, a little freckled thing with curly tow-colored hair, who was slowly but deliberately crawling up the other side of the curving monkey bars. Mayday thought her name might be Angela, although she wasn't quite sure of that. She was in the other grade two class and mostly hung around with different kids. Lately, they'd sat next to each other at lunch a few times, but Angela was normally pretty quiet.

"There's lots of girl superheros," the girl who might be named Angela went on. _She would know, _thought Mayday. Her lunch box had a picture of Princess Power and her team of Star Rovers on the side of it. Princess Power was okay, but in Mayday's opinion she was nothing compared to Spider-Man, because she wasn't real.

"Yes, but Spider-Man isn't one of them," insisted Travis. "Look at his name – Spider-_Man. _He's a guy, and since I'm the only boy here, I get to be him."

"The best climber gets to be Spider-Man," said Mayday coolly. She wasn't going to let him know how mad he was making her. He'd just laugh. "And that's me."

"You're not – " Travis started to say angrily.

"I don't know why we're even playing this dumb game," interrupted Mayday's friend Janeen in an annoyed tone from the ground. "Spider-Man isn't real."

Mayday's jaw dropped. "He is_ so_ real." She stared at Janeen with feelings of mingled disbelief and betrayal. Janeen was her best friend – they even dressed alike some days – and she knew how much Mayday liked Spider-Man. In fact, Mayday secretly wanted to _be_ Spider-Man, although she was careful not to tell Janeen – or anyone – _that_. However, they did talk about him a lot, and Mayday had told Janeen something she'd never told anyone – that Spider-Man had saved her and her mom once, long ago when she was three. Janeen had been envious and had wanted to know _everything _that Mayday knew or could remember about the superhero, and they'd spent many a sleepover whispering about him together.

"No way is he real," said Janeen crossly, an angry expression marring her normally pretty face. Her pale grey eyes looked as hard as marbles. "I am so _sick_ of Spider-Man. It's all we ever play and all we ever talk about." She favored Mayday with a fierce glare and stuck her hands in the pockets of her flowered raincoat.

"My dad says he was only a publicity stunt, years ago; he says the newspapers just tell stories about him," piped up a chubby black haired boy whose name Mayday didn't know. "I think they made him up." He'd been watching from the sidelines and now, as he spoke, he approached them.

Suddenly Mayday thought she'd better sit down. She was starting to feel like she might lose her balance if she stood upright on top of the monkey bars any longer, and her heart hurt as she looked down at the top of Janeen's white-gold hair. She poked her legs through two of the triangles crisscrossing the metallic domed structure, and rested her backside on the slanting rung of a third.

"Come on, Mayday, you don't actually believe in him?" Travis asked tauntingly, dropping to the ground with a little laugh. He looked up at her through the bars with a mischievous expression in his bold black eyes and heckled her with, "Mayday believes in Spider-Man, Mayday believes in Spider-Man!" Normally, Mayday liked Travis, except during those moments when she wanted to punch in his face – such as now. He really seemed to enjoy bugging her, mostly about stupid stuff. Spider-Man, however, was not stupid – not to Mayday. "He's not even the coollest superhero, " Travis continued, "there are lots of better ones."

Mayday felt so mad at Travis's last remark, which she knew he had made just to yank her chain, that she didn't trust herself to speak. Aunt May was always telling her that if you couldn't think of something nice to say, it was better to be silent. But she boiled and seethed inside with impotent anger just the same, thinking of a few choice names she'd like to call Travis. Then she thought of something else, something that would _prove_ that Spider-Man was real. "My Dad used to take his picture," she said, lifting her chin defiantly.

"Yeah, right," said the black-haired boy sceptically. Beside him, Janeen huffed loudly, managing to look both bored and annoyed at the same time. Mayday felt another sharp sting of betrayal. Janeen _knew_ that Mayday had actually seen Spider-Man. Not only that, but Janeen herself had once dared Mayday to sneak the scrapbook full of her dad's old Spider-Man pictures out of Mom's closet. She had managed to do it, and the two best friends had poured over it for one whole afternoon. So why wasn't Janeen sticking up for her? Why was she all of a sudden being so mean?

"No he _did,_" insisted Mayday. "My mom kept a whole scrapbook full of them. He even won an award once."

"Well, your dad musta worked for a newspaper," sneered the black-haired boy. "Bet his pictures were fakes. Bet the newspapers made lots of money on those fake pictures. " He looked up at her slyly. "Maybe your dad's a fake too."

"My dad's not a fake ... he's a teacher," said Mayday primly. She deliberately ignored the other insulting comment about her dad's pictures being fakes. "He teaches at a university, and doesn't take pictures no more. But I don't think he made much money from them. We're not, like, rich or anything."

Then she got mad all over again, thinking of the long ago time when Spider-Man had rescued her and Mom. It had been like something out of a horror movie: they'd been attacked by an unbelievably scary lizard-monster in the park on a sunny day. One minute little Mayday had been out of her mind with terror, staring down into the huge, slavering, pointy-teethed maw of the lizard-creature which she was sure wanted to eat her. The next minute she was whizzing up and away through the air, safe in the arms of her mother, who was also held safe and secure by someone who was holding her. He'd had a cheerful voice, she remembered, calling her mother "Good-looking" and asking if they were okay as he'd dropped them off on the roof of their very own apartment-building.

"Spider-Man is too real," she insisted again. "He helps people all the time." Janeen tossed her silvery head at that but remained silent, and Mayday felt a fresh wave of betrayal wash over her.

The little curly-haired girl who'd been slowly climbing up the side of the monkey bars stopped and just hung there. "Even though he did once help people, he's not around any more," she offered in a conciliatory tone, an anxious, tentative smile lighting up her gold-tinged hazel eyes. "He's probably dead or retired ... no one gets pictures of him nowadays."

Mayday once again didn't trust herself to speak, so she just pressed her lips together firmly and shook her head, looking down through the monkey bars to the gravel below. She didn't know how she knew, but she was sure that Spider-Man was still out there, swinging around the city and rescuing other kids and their moms.

"Can we talk about something else?" snapped Janeen. She flipped her blond ponytail over her shoulder and started fiddling with the big barrette that held it in place. "Spider-Man, Spider-Man all the time. Who cares about him?" She popped the barrette open all of a sudden, and shook her long white-yellow hair loose. "I've got an idea ... why don't we play Princess Power and the Star Rovers?"

"Oh now _that's _realistic," said Mayday sarcastically, swinging her legs with assumed nonchalance. "Who wants to play that they're an intergalactic Princess named Prismilla, with wimpy crystal light powers? Or one of her three dorky sidekicks, with names like Foom, Shoom and Doom? It's so _lame_." She conveniently forgot for a moment that she and Janeen had spent the whole of morning recess playing just that game with Marcus and Sarah. "Ohhh, I'm the light princess, and all I do is shine pretty colors on whatever I look at," Mayday added mockingly in a high-pitched voice.

The curly-haired girl, Angela, gave Mayday an angry look and retreated rapidly back down the side of the monkey bars. She marched up to Janeen. "I'll play, if I can be Foom. She's my favorite ... I love how she's so fast she sets things on fire." Both girls slanted their eyes up at Mayday with cutting looks.

"Can I play?" broke in the unknown black-haired boy. "I can be Doom. He's the only boy and it's pretty cool the way he shakes the earth."

_You're big enough to shake the earth_, thought Mayday nastily, but she kept her mouth shut because she knew it _really_ wouldn't have been nice to say _that_ out loud. She could almost picture Aunt May's disappointed face.

Meanwhile, Travis was scuffing the ground with the toe of his sneaker. "That's a girl's game," he complained. "Can't we play something else?" He shot Mayday a look, but she didn't know what it meant.

Janeen sized him up. "You can be Oxyopic Opacity. He's the main super-villain. He's not bad all the time though; sometimes he even helps Prismilla – he helped her save the planet once."

"What can he do?" Travis asked, as if he didn't watch the show himself. Mayday knew he did because they'd watched it together more than once.

"He's got night and storm powers. He makes clouds and darkness," Angela put in enthusiastically. The little group had started to move away from the monkey bars.

"Alright," said Travis reluctantly. Then he looked back over his shoulder. "Come on, May, don't be mad. We still need one more person."

Stubbornly, Mayday shook her head. Her favorite character to play would normally be Shoom, a Soundkeeper with power over noise and silence, but her feelings were too hurt to want to pretend everything was okay. She looked at Janeen's slim, stiff back, walking away from her, and felt another piercing stab of anger.

After a minute, the others walked off in the direction of the basketball court. But Travis came back over the crunchy gravel and stood right underneath the monkey bars.

"Aw, come on, Mayday," Travis said again. "I'll play Spider-Man with you after we're done with Princess Power."

"Thought you didn't believe he was real," said Mayday sulkily. "You can't have it both ways, Travis McGovern. Either he's real or not."

Travis shrugged. "So Spider-Man's not real ... neither is Santa Claus. Doesn't mean we can't have fun pretending." He waited a minute, but when Mayday didn't answer or look up, he turned and walked quickly away to join the others.

"He is too real," muttered Mayday to herself, needing to get the last word even though no one could hear her. She stayed up there on the top of the monkey bars, aimlessly swinging her feet, feeling miserable and alone. Her loneliness was worsened by the sounds of laughter that started to drift over from the basketball court after a few moments, and by the shouts and calls of the other kids who attended the afterschool program run by McVeedy Elementary, PS 159. There were about 50 kids in all – some by the swings or on the teeter-totters, some playing hopskotch and skipping, some playing tag. A couple of bored caregivers leaned against one of the courtyard's high walls, in the shade of the big tree at the far end of the walled-in area, chatting about grown up things.

"Mayday," said a voice. She turned to see her dad crossing the courtyard toward the monkey bars. _Wow_, she thought in surprise and delight.

It was very uncommon for him to pick Mayday up from school – usually it was Aunt May, and sometimes, less often, her mother, who came to collect her. In fact, it was so rare for Dad to get her that the last time he'd tried to do so, she remembered, he'd had to spend ten minutes arguing with an overly vigilant daycare counsellor that he really was Mayday Parker's father, eventually pulling out his wallet to show her some of his ID cards, and, when that didn't convince her, finally resorting to calling Mom on his cellphone to get her to vouch for him. For weeks afterward, Mayday's mom had teased him mercilessly for looking like a creepy child-stealer. Although at first she had secretly been a tad embarrassed that a daycare worker had thought her dad might be a kidnapper, eventually Mayday had begun to find it funny also, joining in wholeheartedly with her mother's teasing. Her dad was quiet, gentle, _safe_ ... not dangerous at all.

"How come you're sitting up here all by yourself, kiddo?" Dad asked, stopping beside the metal structure and looking up at her. His kind blue eyes, rumpled overcoat and wind-ruffled brown hair were a welcome sight, and suddenly Mayday felt a bit, just a tiny bit, less miserable.

"No reason," sighed Mayday, pulling her legs through the triangles and beginning to climb down the metallic structure. "You're early ... and where's Aunt May?"

Her father reached up and plucked her off the monkey bars as she was coming down, setting her carefully on her feet in front of him. "I was visiting your Aunt this afternoon and she wasn't feeling well. So I said I'd pick you up. Aunt May's building isn't far from your school, and I guess it took me less time than I thought it would to get here." He lifted her chin with a gentle hand. "You sure you're okay, sweetheart?"

"Yes ... no ... it's a long story," Mayday said glumly. They turned and started walking towards the daycare workers, chatting and resting in the shade of a big old oak tree which stood against the courtyard wall at the far end. "Mostly it's just a dumb story," she added. "I don't want to talk about it right now." She looked over at the group of grown-up caregivers, and then gave her father a sly, sidelong glance. "What do ya wanna bet you get in trouble again? Betcha they think you're a childsnatcher, come to take me away."

"I don't know if I care to take that bet," said her father with a rueful little laugh. "But tell you what, since I'm early, how 'bout we go and get some ice cream?" Mayday perked up even more at that. Ice cream was the usual prize that she won off their bets anyway.

* * *

Mayday was sitting at the kitchen table, doing her math homework. Her parents were making dinner together – another rare occurrence – and talking about grown up stuff in the background. She was having a hard time concentrating on her four-digit adding because she was still thinking about how mean Janeen was being. What made everything worse was that, up until recently, Janeen had always seemed to be nearly as much a fan of Spider-Man as Mayday herself was. Of course, lately Janeen hadn't been much interested in Spider-Man games, but then, she wasn't getting into hardly anything these days. Anyway, today's betrayal took the cake. Imagine saying that there was no Spider-Man after your best friend had shown you exciting pictures and told you secret stories of actually meeting him. The two-faced pure meanness of it was getting Mayday steamed all over again. And Travis wasn't much better, with that remark about Santa Claus ... he knew she'd believed in Santa Claus until only last year, and that she was still a little disappointed that he wasn't real. 

"So I called my agent," Mom was saying, as she walked over to the kitchen table with a stack of plates and cutlery in her hands, "And I had him offer them some better photos and maybe even a short interview." She began setting the table, the gold bangles on her wrists jingling faintly as she moved. "Scoot, muffin," she said to Mayday when she noticed her sitting there. "Wash your hands, because we're nearly ready." Mayday closed her math textbook and lifted it out of the way as her mom set a blue plate on the placemat in front of her.

"And this is so important to you that you're willing to talk to these gossip hounds ... why?" Dad asked sceptically while he placed the salad he'd just been mixing in the center of the round table on the lazy susan. Mayday slid down from the chair, and returned her math text and exercise book to her backpack. Then she headed towards the door of the big kitchen.

"I told you," Mom said in an exasperated tone. "I don't mind being featured briefly with Mayday on a show called 'Celebrity Moms.' There's no possible way it can be bad – unless the whole thing is like the clip I saw, which basically made it seem like I was a single parent. I think it's not too much to ask that StarTV actually mention that I have a husband as well, maybe show pictures of the three of us ..."

"I prefer that they don't," Dad said in a low voice, just as Mayday went into the hall bathroom and turned on the light. "Safer that way ..."

"Oh for heaven's sake, Peter. My last name's Parker ... we've been married for ten years ..." the rest of what her mom was saying was drowned out as Mayday turned the tap on full blast and held her hands underneath it. She had no idea what they were talking about, but it was nice that they were all going to be having supper together for a change. Too often Dad rushed off in the middle of a meal or didn't show up at all because he was working late at his lab. Sometimes even Mom had to leave early, when she was acting in a show, and then it was just Mayday with Aunt May or, occasionally, Aunt Anna. Not that she minded being with either of them, but it was somehow more fun when her parents were there.

Mayday dried her hands on a towel and returned to the kitchen. Her mom was dishing her very favorite pasta, angel hair pasta, onto her plate in a generous helping as she climbed back into her chair. Unfortunately, as Mayday eyed the tangle of delicate pasta hungrily, her mom ruined it a second later by spooning some sort of chicken and tomato mixture with – yech – flecks of green stuff in it on top of the noodles. Mayday was too smart, though, to spoil a rare family dinner by complaining about the food. Surreptitiously she began picking the tiny green flecks out of the pasta and leaving them on her placemat. She could see that it was going to be a big job, so she was determined to get started right away.

"I'm still not clear what exactly you want _me_ to do about this," Dad was saying as he set a basket of bread rolls on the table beside the salad. Mayday was distracted momentarily from ranging the yucky little green leaf pieces along the bottom edge of her placemat, because she loved warm buttered rolls even more than angel-hair pasta.

"I don't want you to do anything" said Mom, pouring a glass of milk for Mayday and setting it in front of her. "I only wanted to tell you that I'd like to give them copies of some of our photos – the ones you took of us last summer with the timer –" Quick as lightning, Mayday snagged a roll, and then returned to the delicate operation of separating her dinner from disgusting little green bits.

"I thought we were going to keep Mayday away from your career – limit the public's sight of her," Dad said, pulling out his chair and sitting down smoothly. He put his elbows on the table, folded his hands together and rested his chin on his interlocked fingers, giving Mayday's mother a pointed look.

"It's too late for that," argued Mom. She opened a drawer and took a corkscrew out of it, and then grabbed a bottle of wine from the counter and set them both beside her husband's plate. "They already have shots of Mayday and me shopping, and the clip from the Tonys this year, when Mayday went as my date because you couldn't make it. She's around me, she's going to have her picture taken." Mom paused and gave both Mayday and her father one of her special smiles. It caused her dimples to show and made her look almost as though she were Mayday's older sister instead of her mom. "I can't help it if I prefer that people see Mayday in the excellent pictures taken by her father, and that he occasionally appear along with his _wife _and _daughter_ in one or two of them."

"Okay, okay," Dad gave in all at once, returning Mom's smile. His blue eyes twinkled as he uncorked the wine and began pouring it into two crystal glasses. "As long as they mention what a snappy dresser, talented dancer, all-around gorgeous hunk I am – for a professor, that is."

Mom snorted as she took her seat, pulled her napkin from its ring and shook it out in her lap. "They're more likely to spend most of the show raving on about Hollywood's latest power couple – Cady Staunton and what's-his-face – with their beautiful twins and the amusement park they built for them on their 6.5 million dollar estate. I'll probably show up in the has-been section at the end ... you know, they'll say 'Mary Jane Parker peaked early ... now she does voice work for animated movies, models a little, dabbles in theatre ... soon she'll be doing Oil of Olay commercials ...'"

Dad rolled his eyes. "She won a Tony last year," he inserted emphatically, while helping himself to some salad.

"Cady Staunton's kids have their own amusement park?" broke in Mayday, having finally heard something she was interested in knowing more about. Then she frowned. "Aren't they, like, babies? How come babies get to have an amusement park?"

"Yes, well, apparently a good celebrity mom gives her kids an amusement park for their first birthday," Mom laughed. The overhead light glinted off her burnished hair as she picked up her knife and began cutting and buttering Mayday's roll for her.

"You finished organizing your basil flakes, kiddo?" asked Dad in amused voice. Caught, Mayday cringed, then nodded. "Okay, then, you want to tell us what was bothering you today after school?"

"Oh, nothing," Mayday said, sighing heavily, her blue funk of earlier descending on her once again. "It's just that some kids were saying mean things." She picked up a forkful of angel hair pasta from the very edge of her plate, and put it in her mouth.

"How mean?" asked Mom in concern.

"That grade four boy, that Bryce fellow, hasn't been picking on you again, has he?" Dad inquired with a frown.

"Travis and Janeen and I fixed him good," said Mayday with satisfaction, remembering the day that he'd shoved her hard in the back, only to have Travis and Janeen gang up on him, kicking him sharply in the shins and threatening to call a teacher. It had been her idea to have her friends lying in wait for the next time he pushed her, and it had worked out perfectly. He hadn't bothered her since, mostly because the three of them were always together. Then she sighed heavily again, remembering that maybe they wouldn't be together much in the future. How could she continue to hang around with two such backstabbing traitors?

She noticed her parents were still looking at her expectantly as they ate. "No, it was Travis and Janeen," Mayday said in a subdued voice, "They were saying mean things about Spider-Man." Her pent-up feelings of injustice and wrong burst out, causing her to raise her voice. "It's so unfair. Janeen knows I've met Spider-Man – she's even seen Dad's pictures – and yet she went and said that Spider-Man isn't real. And Travis was almost as bad, saying that believing in Spider-Man is like believing in Santa Claus ... like he thinks I'm some kinda _baby_." She took a savage bite from her buttered roll to soothe her outraged feelings. "Some friends," she added bitterly, her words partially muffled by the huge bite of roll she was chewing.

A very odd silence descended. Mayday noticed her mother shoot her father an expressive look. "What?" she asked, confused, swallowing the piece of roll and looking back and forth between her parents.

"Nothing," her mother said quickly. "Eat your chicken, honey; it's really very good."

Mayday picked up a bite-sized chunk of chicken with her fork and eyed it suspiciously. "And then this other girl – I think her name's Angela – said that Spider-Man is dead, because it's been so long since anyone's got his picture." She cautiously inserted the chicken in her mouth, but luckily it didn't taste too bad. It actually tasted good, kinda spicy. Maybe that gross green stuff hadn't ruined it after all.

As she was chewing, a sudden thought struck her.

"Dad, you used to take pictures of Spider-Man didn't you?" Mayday asked eagerly.

"Um ... yeah," said Dad hesitantly. He dropped his eyes to his plate, and began shovelling food into his mouth at a rapid rate.

"And you met him, right? You know him?" persisted Mayday. She thought she heard her mother stifle a laugh, but when she looked back at her, Mom was quietly eating her salad, her eyes downcast and her pretty face expressionless.

"You might say that," said Dad in an odd voice. "In a manner of speaking." He picked up his glass of water and took a long drink.

_Grown-ups! Why can't they ever give a straight answer about anything_? thought Mayday impatiently. Well, she was going to get something definite to take back to her friends tomorrow. "Have you seen him recently?" she asked. Her father just looked at her silently for a minute and then asked, "What do you mean?"

Mayday scooped up another forkful of pasta, this time with some chicken on top. "I mean, is he still alive? He's not dead, is he?" She shoved the food into her mouth as she waited in suspense for an answer.

"No, I think I can safely guarantee you that he is not dead – yet," Dad said uncomfortably.

"Peter!" said Mom forcefully, looking a little piqued. "Don't be flip."

"And I know that you've met him, Mom" said Mayday positively in between mouthfuls of bun. "Because I remember when he saved us that time." The moment she said these words, she knew that something was up. The atmosphere of the room, which already felt weird to Mayday, altered even more dramatically.

"Did you tell her about that, MJ?" Dad asked Mom incredulously over Mayday's head. "Did you _remind_ her?"

"No!" Mom stated defensively. She shook her head decisively at the same moment, causing her heavy, dangly earrings to swing wildly back and forth. "We've only ever talked about it once, right after it happened."

Mayday was a bit taken aback by the vehemence in her parents' voices. Unsure of what was going on, she looked back and forth between the two of them, blinking her eyes rapidly. They weren't going to start fighting were they? They hardly ever fought, but when they did it was A Big Deal.

Glancing back down at Mayday, Mom said encouragingly, "What do you remember about that day, honey?"

"Well, I remember we were going to the park" said Mayday slowly, relieved that an argument had somehow been averted. "It was sunny and warm, and I think you were pushing me in something. We arrived, you lifted me out and took my hand to lead me to the duck pond."

"You_ don't _remember this," interrupted Dad, almost sharply. "You only think you do."

"Peter," her mother said in a soft, warning tone, shooting her father a look that Mayday couldn't quite comprehend. The temperature in the room seemed to chill noticeably.

"No, MJ," Dad was saying resolutely. "It's called childhood amnesia: cognitive psychologists and neurologists have proved that people do not recall memories occurring before four years of age – they only think they do, because they've been told about them."

"Oh, then I suppose you're accusing me of having told her about all this?" said Mayday's mom indignantly, her own voice sharpening and her eyes narrowing. Her body language showed that she was tense and annoyed. "I still have nightmares about that day ... and all the other days. Do you think I'd want to saddle her with that?"

"No, I –"

"Excuse me," Mayday said with dignity. "_I_ was talking, and it's rude to interrupt."

Her parents exchanged another look, this time one of amusement, and the temperature of the room seemed to warm up a little bit again. "Sorry, Mayday," Dad apologized. "You have the floor."

Mayday puffed up a little bit at finding herself with the leading role in the conversation. Usually she was the odd one out, trying to follow along while her parents talked about stuff she didn't understand or couldn't care less about. "I remember I picked up a long branch," she began again. "I started to poke it into the pond, and Mom took it away from me. Then suddenly this huge thing rose up out of the water. It was sorta like a giant alligator, ugly and scaly and nasty."

Mayday shuddered at the memory, and noticed that Mom had gone all white and shivery as well. "It had a deep, raspy voice and it said something about ..." she frowned, trying to remember. That gravelly voice, she'd heard it many times in her nightmares, "...a lucky day. Then it opened its mouth, and it had all these long pointy teeth. I was sure it was gonna eat me, but Mommy screamed and stabbed it in the eye with the stick."

"Oh, she remembers alright," Mom asserted. She shot Dad another keen look that Mayday didn't know how to interpret. "That's exactly what happened."

"Mo-om. You're interrupting again," protested Mayday.

"Go on, Mayday," Dad said gravely. He did not look happy. He set down his fork, and gave her his full attention. It was a little disconcerting to have his piercing blue eyes fixed on her face so Mayday looked down at her plate as she strove to remember.

"Mom picked me up and started to run. Then something grabbed us and we were flying through the air, above the trees, swinging down the streets. In no time we were on the top of our apartment building, and there was Spider-Man. After, Mom told me who he was, and that he'd saved us, but I already knew..." Mayday smiled broadly at the memory, and gave a happy sigh.

"Do you remember what he said to us?" Mom asked softly. She had stopped eating as well, and was looking at Mayday with new eyes.

"I remember he was cheerful and he joked a little," said Mayday. "He asked you, Mom, what two such good looking girls were doing hanging out in such bad company, then he asked me if I was okay -- and when I said I was, he mussed my hair and said it would take more than an overgrown iguana to scare a big girl like me." She remembered vividly how proud she'd been when he'd said that. His words had made it seem almost as though she hadn't been frightened at all ... even though of course she knew she had been ... she'd been very badly frightened indeed.

Mayday had nothing else to say, so she finished her bun in silence. But when the silence continued, she realized that she had somehow killed the conversation. Dad was always joking about topics that killed the conversation, and apparently Spider-Man was one of them, for reasons Mayday didn't entirely understand. The other part of the usual joke was that whoever killed the conversation had to be the one to revive it. Mayday took a drink of her milk and turned to her father. He was regarding her thoughtfully.

"You know what I wish, Dad?" said Mayday, wistfully.

"What's that, kiddo?"

"I wish I could prove to Janeen and Travis that Spider-Man is real. They're never gonna believe me even if I tell them_ you_ say he's still alive." She swallowed another bite of pasta, discovering in the process that she had no more appetite: she was full. "They never believe anything unless it's right in front of them."

"Well, that is a problem," agreed Dad. "But why do you think it is important for them to know that Spider-Man is real? I mean, apart from being able to prove to everybody that you're right and they're wrong."

Mayday thought about it, and then she said, "He's kinda neat, the stuff he can do. It felt really cool when he picked me and Mom up and took us home. And he helps people – he saved me and Mom that day. Travis says there are better superheros, but I think he's the _coollest_."

Everything was quiet again, yet it was a different sort of silence than before. Mayday noticed that Mom was beaming at her. "I've always wished I could see him one more time," Mayday confided to Mom, as an afterthought.

"I can relate to that," said Mom. She picked up her glass of wine and looked at Dad over the rim of it with laughing eyes as she took a sip.

Dad was looking uncomfortable again as he scraped his plate clean. Mayday gave up. Seemed like she had trouble understanding her parents even when they weren't saying much of anything. She'd had enough. "May I be excused?" she requested in a plaintive tone.

"Hmmm," said Mom, setting down her half-empty wine glass and leaning back in her chair. "Looks like somebody had her dinner spoiled with too much ice cream. You ate ... what? A dinner roll, some pasta, and two bites of chicken. Are you sure that's enough?"

"I'm totally full," Mayday insisted. She was already sliding down from her chair. "And please can I watch T.V. while I'm finishing my math homework? Just this once?" she pleaded. "I had a bad day."

Her parents both laughed at that, but Mom shook her head. "No, homework first, and then you may watch half an hour of television."

"'Kay." Mayday was too smart a girl to fight a losing battle, and she was through the kitchen door by the time Mom had finished her sentence.

End of Part I

_A/N: By a weird coincidence, I find I'm posting this father-daughter story on Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to dads everywhere!_ _Oh, and if anyone feels like reviewing, that would be nice. Thanks in advance._


	2. Chapter 2: An After Dinner Conversation

**Mayday's Hero**

Part II of V

_Disclaimer: I fully admit that this is 1) a rather silly story and that__ 2)__ none of these characters are mine. They all belong to Marvel. I'm just playing a bit._

_A/N: This fairly short chapter is (obviously) from Peter's POV. There's a smidgen of fluff at the end too: it was the only opportunity in the story for some, and I couldn't resist. _

_In case anyone wonders, I should explain that my version of Mayday is not exactly like the Mayday in the Spider-Girl comic (what little I've read of it). Not only is she much younger (7, just about to turn 8), she's also my own take on the character (different hair color, etc)._

Peter Parker stared unseeingly out the wide kitchen windows, finishing his glass of wine. MJ was putting Mayday to bed, and he had just finished cleaning up the kitchen and loading the dishwasher. He felt like he was in some kind of fugue state, his tired brain and overtaxed nerves making it impossible to think clearly. He couldn't have told why, exactly, but he had been profoundly rattled by Mayday's memories of that day in the park. Clearly it had traumatized her enough that she remembered it in very great detail. Was it too much to ask that his family be spared some of the horrors that he'd seen? Apparently it was. He sighed and set his empty glass on the clean, bare counter. The dishwasher whooshed softly behind him as he drifted off into an unwelcome reverie.

It was no wonder that little Mayday remembered that park incident so vividly. It had been one of the worst days of his life, too. He recalled being holed up in the lab, working desperately on that confounded gene therapy, exhausted and missing his family. He hadn't seen MJ and Mayday for nearly three days – and then suddenly, out of the blue, the certainty that they were in terrible danger came drilling into his skull. It was like the mother of all migraines. He didn't even remember getting out of the lab and into his suit and mask; his next memory found him pushing speeds he'd never reached before, heading blindly towards home.

On the way there, his spider-sense alerted him to a scene from his worst nightmares, taking place in the small park that was just a block from where they'd lived at the time. From high over the street, he saw MJ running awkwardly in those damn high-heeled boots of hers, clutching Mayday in her arms, and the Lizard almost on top of them, with its razor-sharp claws and needle-like teeth just inches away from MJ's neck. The only reason it hadn't caught them before now was that it appeared to be injured; it was holding one of its eyes and hissing, blindly swatting at them with its free hand. But it was still as lethally fast and as deranged as ever, rapidly gaining on them while the other people in the park screamed uselessly and scattered helter-skelter. One second, even half a second later, and it would have been too late. As it was, he swung down frantically from the highest point he could reach, just managed to snag MJ by the belt of her leather coat, and prayed that she could keep hold of Mayday while he looped crazily off toward their apartment building, barely able to control his arcs.

Funny that Mayday had liked that wild ride. He would have thought that she'd have been terrified. Funny too that she remembered him as cheerful; he'd been so nearly distraught that he would never have known what he'd even said to them, had MJ not told him about it later. All he remembered was dropping them off near home, and diving off the side of the building, raging at himself the whole time. Stupid to think he could somehow save it, stupid to think he should even try. The thing was no longer human – best kill it, put it out of its misery before it slaughtered innocents or did any more damage. And with that determination, and his veins flooded with any icy fury like the one he'd felt in that last battle with Norman Osborn, he'd headed back to the park, arriving just in time to see the Lizard disappear through a ripped open grating into the sewers beneath the city.

He remembered following it into the dark hole, creeping stealthily along the slimy ceiling, then leaping down and striking it violently to the ground from behind while quipping inanely about giant crocodiles living in NYC's sewers. He'd asked the Lizard if that was how it'd gotten there, by some kid flushing it down a toilet, while he pummeled it furiously. Always before he'd pulled his punches; he'd been hampered by the foolish desire not to wound the creature – but not this time. This time his very rage seemed to give him strength and speed, allowing him to avoid easily the crushing blows of that powerful lashing tail, and inducing him to pound into that almost impervious hide with single-minded fury.

Probably it was only his pure, unadulterated anger that had allowed him to subdue the Lizard in the end. The Lizard was blindingly fast – but rage made him faster, fuelled his strength as he caught and held it in an inexorable grasp. He vaguely recalled taunting it with jokes about evolution – _or should I say devolution?_ he'd wisecracked – while slamming it repeatedly into the ceiling and the walls. Finally, the weakened Lizard had hissed that he talked too much, he always talked too much, in its horrible rasping voice, only to have its words and then its breath choked off by Spider-Man's iron fist clamping implacably around its thick scaly neck. He'd squeezed and squeezed. And when it was all over and the Lizard lay prone and unmoving at his feet, he'd been sure that it was dead – and hadn't even regretted killing it, not for a moment.

Of course, luckily for him, it apparently took more than even Spider-Man's strength to kill such a creature. When he'd discovered that it was miraculously still alive, he'd carried it back to his lab, _their_ lab, and administered the experimental gene therapy he'd been working on to it. Praying inwardly that the treatment would work, he delivered the mild toxin right into the creature's cells in a viral form, with a series of timed injections. Then, mask off but still in costume, he waited with his head in his hands, oblivious to how much time had passed – until, all at once, something stirred. He raised his head and found himself watching the Lizard's grotesque visage shrivel, shrink and recede into the pleasant, familiar face of Dr. Curtis Connors, Peter Parker's friend and mentor, thesis supervisor and colleague. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right Doc?" he'd muttered, helping his friend to sit up.

Even then the ordeal hadn't been over, because he'd wanted, he'd needed to know why that thing had gone after his family, angrily demanding an explanation from a still groggy Connors. He'd assumed that the Lizard had somehow discovered his secret identity, and been flabbergasted to discover that the attack on MJ and Mayday had merely been a stupid accident, an instance of colossally bad timing, a really screwy coincidence. And thus Dr. Connors had also inadvertently discovered his prize student's dual identity. Now, nearly five years later, Peter still couldn't make sense of everything that had happened on that day ...

"Hey," said MJ, walking into the darkened kitchen and breaking into his gloomy thoughts. "What're you brooding about all alone here in the dark?" She came over and leaned against the counter, facing him with quiet smile.

"Oh nothing, really," Peter shrugged. "She asleep?" When MJ nodded, he went on, "Just remembering that day in the park."

"I worry from time to time that we're in denial about the weird stuff that occasionally happens," MJ said thoughtfully. "We hardly ever talk about it." She fixed her eyes on him, smiling even more warmly. "I think it's good that May brought up that park incident, don't you?"

"It was certainly a surreal conversation," said Peter, frowning a little. Then, seeing that MJ was obviously in a mood to talk, he admitted quietly, "it bothers me that she has memories of something so scary. It's not fair that a kid should have to deal with something like that."

"Yeah, well, life's not fair," MJ said with a trace of impatience in her tone. "You're not still blaming yourself for that, are you? Newsflash: it wasn't your fault – none of it was."

Peter laughed ruefully, and passed a hand over his tired eyes. "You have to admit I'm a magnet for trouble, MJ – a trait I seem to have passed onto my family."

MJ looked away from him and shook her head, as if to herself. Then she shifted her stance and appeared to initiate a new thread of conversation. "I know that we decided that Mayday's too young to know about you yet," she began, "but don't you think it's great that she admires Spider-Man so much?"

"I guess so," said Peter slowly, wondering where MJ was going with this idea.

"Too bad her friends are giving her a hard time about him," MJ remarked casually. She looked at him expressively.

"Oh no," Peter said, shrinking from her steady green eyes. "No, you can't mean ..." She arched an eyebrow at him, and held her ground.

"Look, even if I were to consider putting the suit and mask on for something so frivolous, I wouldn't risk it, ok?" he said in a low, impatient voice.

"Oh, so you can put the suit on to fight somebody or to stop a disaster, but you can't do it make a little girl's day?" inquired MJ in a voice barely above a whisper, her eyes snapping green sparks at him. "Why is making somebody who loves you happy frivolous?"

Peter turned back to the window as he struggled to find the right words. "That didn't come out right – it's not what I meant. I meant I wouldn't ... because it would be dangerous." He finished in a tight voice, "It's dangerous for her, for _anyone_, to be seen with me."

"Peter," said MJ earnestly, taking a step nearer to him. "You and Mayday are lucky. You don't know how lucky you both are." She slid her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his shoulder. "Mayday has a hero, and he's a _real_ hero. She looks up to him, but that's okay because he's worth looking up to ... " She paused for a moment, as if uncertain of what to say next. He turned in her arms, and felt himself sinking deep into her luminous green eyes. "How many daughters ever idolize their fathers as heros?" MJ asked softly. Peter thought of Philip Watson, and then he slid his arms around her waist too, resting his forehead against hers and inhaling the subtle fragrance that clung to her splendid red-gold hair.

Mary Jane went on. "And _you_ are lucky because your daughter has one simple heart's desire, right here and right now. You have a once in a lifetime chance – a chance to grant your only daughter's dearest wish. How many fathers will ever have the same opportunity?" She brought a hand forward from behind his back and cradled his cheek, leaning up to plant a tender, gentle kiss on his lips. The poignant sweetness of it stole his breath for a moment, and then she pulled back, looking questioningly up into his eyes.

"It's just ... I don't feel like a hero, MJ," he said in a subdued voice. "Most of the time I just make it up as I go along. I don't know if Mayday should be looking up to me."

MJ persisted. "You're trying to do the right thing ... so what if you make mistakes, if you don't have it all together? No one does. And yet you keep trying anyway. That's enough heroism for a little girl." He looked back at her, and thought, not for the first time, how fortunate he was to have been blessed with a partner who was as wise as she was beautiful. She released him, tilting her head to one side and regarding him with an expression of mingled affection and exasperation. "You know," she added, "sometimes I think you're afraid to let yourself be happy."

MJ turned to leave the room, and he watched her walk away from him with her usual sinuous grace, thinking abstractedly about what she'd just said in the tiny corner of his brain that wasn't absorbed in the hypnotic sway of her hips. The light streaming in from the hallway gave her a glorious coppery halo. In the doorway she paused, slanting emerald eyes back over her shoulder with a look that somehow managed to be both fey and bold at the same time. "I'm going to take a nice, long, relaxing bath," she said invitingly. "Feel like washing my back?"

End of Part II

_A/N: The hair-smelling moment was inspired by a similar moment in jjonahjameson's wonderful story The Boy Next Door_, _Ch. 2. (If you haven't already, run, don't walk, to read it). What can I say? I only imitate the best._

_Reviews are always appreciated. I know this story is lightweight, but it's still my baby, and I'd love to know what readers think about it._


	3. Chapter 3: A Stealth Operation

**Mayday's Hero**

Part III of V

_Disclaimer_: _This story is a work of fanfiction, so the characters and concepts are all borrowed from other people (mainly Marvel, a little from the movies). I'm not keeping anything for myself, and I'm not making any money off of this story either._

_A/N: You'll probably figure it out on your own, but you might like to know in advance that this chapter tells the story first from Mayday's POV and then from Peter's._

Mayday found herself climbing on the monkey bars after school as usual with Travis the next day. Faced with the daunting prospect of no one to play with during morning recess, she'd decided pragmatically that she simply couldn't stay mad at Travis. He was always annoying whether he wanted to be or not, and he probably hadn't meant anything by his Santa Claus comment after all. Besides, he was fun to hang out with. So she'd asked him casually while they were lining up for morning assembly if he still wanted to play Spider-Man with her, he'd said "Sure," and that was that.

Janeen, however, was another matter. Mayday had thought her face looked pinched and unhappy all day, but, despite catching her eye many times, Janeen made no overtures in her direction, and Mayday decided that if Janeen didn't apologize for being a traitor, then she wouldn't be friendly to her either. Now Janeen was sort of hanging around near the monkey bars too, appearing rather forlorn as she pretended to play hopskotch by herself, but Mayday hardened her heart and looked the other way.

Today Travis and Mayday were climbing as quickly as they could to see who could get to the top of the monkey bars first. Whoever won the race would get the prize of being the masked superhero in their game.

"I'm Spider-Man!" announced Travis predictably, even though he was nowhere near the top yet. It was just like him to try to change the rules as soon as he noticed that he wasn't winning. Mayday opened her lips to disagree vociferously, and then observed that Janeen was listening to them, probably hoping that they'd get into a fight and stop playing. Keeping one eye on her _former_ best friend, Mayday decided she'd better let Travis have his way, even though he nearly always got to be Spider-Man when they played.

"If you're Spider-Man, then I get to be a supervillain," said Mayday agreeably. She was further up the side of the dome than Travis. At least she'd win the race.

"Deal," conceded Travis, giving her a wide gap-toothed grin through the monkey bars. His hair fell in his eyes again and he paused a moment to brush it away. "Which one do you wanna be? Doc Ock? The Green Goblin?"

"Nah," said Mayday, still climbing. "I'm gonna be the Lizard. I've got sharp teeth and claws and I'm gonna bite you." She gnashed at him for emphasis. Now they were both crawling over the curving top of the metallic dome, but Mayday was far ahead. She knew she was going to reach the center first.

"Spidey never fought no villain named the Lizard," Travis stated definitively.

"Thought you said he wasn't real," Mayday said triumphantly, reaching the top at same moment. "I won!" she declared, carefully getting to her feet again and standing tall.

"Okay, okay, you won," acknowledged Travis, as he finally reached her. "And he _isn't_ real – so I guess you can make up some dumb villain called The Lizard if you want."

Before Mayday could retort that the Lizard was also real, and _really_ scary, she was interrupted by the approach of three new kids. One of them was the soft-spoken Angela, another was the chubby black-haired boy from yesterday, and the last was a boy she didn't know, another freckled, curly-headed kid who looked a lot like Angela.

Angela ignored Travis and Mayday, making a beeline straight for Janeen. "Hi," she said cheerily.

"Hi," said Janeen in a subdued voice.

"Can we finish the game from yesterday?" Angela asked. "My brother Eric wants to play too," she added as an afterthought.

"Hi, Eric" said Janeen. "Hi Kendall," she said to the chubby boy. "Sure," she said to Angela. Then, looking defiantly up at Mayday, she called out, "Hey Travis – d'ya want to finish playing Princess Power with us?"

Mayday held her breath. "Nah," said Travis indifferently. "We're playing Spider-Man."

"Not him again," sneered the black-haired boy whose name was Kendall. "I told you before, he's just a big fake."

"Is not!" exclaimed Mayday adamantly, deciding that she didn't like this rude boy, this Kendall, one bit.

"Is he the one with the red and blue tights?" the new boy, Eric, asked his sister in a confused voice.

"Oh yeah," Travis said, snapping his fingers, "I forgot about the stupid suit." He gave Mayday a teasing look. "It's kind of a rip-off of Superman, doncha think, with those colors?"

"Hey, now," said a cheery voice from somewhere above them, "Don't knock the red and blue pyjamas."

Mayday turned her head. The rest of the children looked up and froze. They were all flabbergasted at the sight of a masked man wearing a tight red and blue outfit crisscrossed by black lines and with a black spider on his chest. His head resting on a gloved hand, he was lying, in the most relaxed way possible, along the narrow top of the high courtyard wall.

"Spider-Man!" exclaimed Mayday in delight.

* * *

_Twenty Minutes Earlier _... 

Peter Parker had been crouching, upside down and out of sight, in the shadows created by the overhang of the school roof, for so long that his legs were cramping. It was a good thing that the blood didn't run to his head, because if it did, he would certainly have grown dizzy by now. Yet this position was necessary, since surprising a handful of school children behind their caregivers' backs suddenly seemed like it was going to be an incredibly delicate operation, with a level of difficulty that approached breaking into a shielded high security installation without triggering an alarm.

After a full, exhausting day of lecturing and supervising labs, and a quick, last-minute averting of a city bus accident on the way over to McVeedy Elementary, Peter had arrived at his daughter's school only minutes before the final bell rang. Trying to stay out of sight, he'd alighted on the roof of the ancient school building, and then crawled stealthily under the overhang, positioning himself at the perfect vantage point of Mayday's favorite corner of the playground, the monkey bars. Then, when the bell had rung, the school buses had filled up and departed, and the children in the afterschool program had come out to play, he had realized just what a bad, what an_ insane_, idea this plan was.

Given what he knew of their attitude to ordinary strangers, the children's guardians – and perhaps even the children themselves – would probably freak out at the sight of a masked, costumed stranger dropping into their midst out of nowhere. In fact, the moment he appeared and the daycare workers saw him, there would be pandemonium; the police would be called, and the traumatized children would be herded into the building away from him. Once again he would probably, and this time justifiably, be taken for a dangerous, sinister childsnatcher by the adults around him. And, while he didn't mind alarming thieves and lowlifes, the last thing he wanted to do was become the stuff of children's nightmares.

_That's no way to maintain a low profile, Spidey_, he thought wryly to himself. He recalled the long-ago day when, shortly after they were married, MJ had suggested to him that his life, _both_ his lives, might be easier if he stopped selling photos of himself to the _Daily Bugle. Continue being Spider-Man, _she'd suggested, _but keep a low profile._ He'd laughed at the absurdity of her idea, since the two concepts were, in his opinion, mutually exclusive._ Easier said than done_, he'd quipped, but on a whim he'd decided to try her suggestion for a brief time anyway.

Her advice had come at an opportune moment. For once, he could afford to listen her, because an independent film that she had acted in for next to nothing had turned into an unexpected critical and box office success, leading to other good parts, and he himself had just landed a coveted internship as Dr. Connors' primary research assistant. It was not a job working as one of the lowly lab techs, the job that he'd been fired from in his first year of college, but a well-paying position with flexible hours, which involved coordinating other R.A.s and techs as well as working closely with the good doctor himself. Combining their incomes, he and MJ had actually begun to earn enough money to live on comfortably for the first time since they'd gotten together.

Mary Jane's idea had turned out to be more than a sensible piece of advice; it became a gift that just went on giving. Not only was_ The Daily Bugle_ the main source of Spider-Man's bad publicity, but ironically enough, it derived much of its fodder from the photographs that Peter Parker sold Jameson. Take away the photographs, and you were left either with nothing or else with merely sketchy, often contradictory, reports from eyewitnesses and survivors. In time, some of these accounts became incredibly far-fetched, referring to improbable "Spidey sightings" and encounters that he knew for a fact hadn't ever happened. Before too long, due to the lack of any decent corroborating images, he'd ceased to be front page news. No one else could get a clear picture of him, and despite a few spectacular battles with other superfreaks, he largely managed to avoid video cameras as well. Gradually, as the stories about him grew wilder, he stopped making the legitimate news almost altogether.

Oh, Spider-Man still spent a lot of his time, too much time, rescuing people, breaking up fights, stopping crimes and pounding the odd crazy super villain – but the only people who knew about these events, apart from MJ, were those directly involved, and a surprising number of them were cooperative if he asked them not to say too much about him. Come to think of it, Mayday's report that some of her school friends thought he wasn't even real was truly gratifying. Spider-Man was apparently starting to pass into the realm of urban legend. Not only did this make it easier for him to carry out his mission, but it had the added benefit of keeping his family safe – well, _safer_ – too.

But now all of these positive developments were about to be blown to hell because he was going to show up, in broad daylight, in costume, at his daughter's school of all places. Was he crazy? He reminded himself, again, that what looked like a good idea when he was lying, drowsy and contented, in the arms of his lovely wife, surrounded by intoxicatingly fragrant clouds of her dewberry bodywash and floral shampoo, rarely, in fact, turned out to be such a good idea in the cold light of day. All those perfumes must have gone straight to his head, along with rosy lips and a pair of roguish green eyes.

Then he thought of Mayday's small, wistful face at supper last night and sighed.

Well, at least it wouldn't be the first time he'd made a fool of himself for love, he reflected._ Nor the last, probably_. Maybe with extraordinary finesse and caution, and a little bit of luck, he could pull this endeavor off without embarrassing himself too much.

The difficulty was getting down there, near to Mayday, without being seen by an adult. He knew from Aunt May that normally all of the daycare workers, except for the one or two who patrolled infrequently at random, stayed out of the sun, gossiping in the shade of the big tree at the opposite end of the schoolyard from the monkey bars. But today two of the counsellors were standing and talking right in the middle of the yard, commanding a clear view of the whole area. Unless he went around the back of the school, away from the courtyard and the children, they would see him.

Compounding the problem, Mayday and her little friends weren't even at the monkey bars. Of course today would have to be the one day she'd decide to do something else. Instead, Mayday and a brown-haired boy were laughing in the middle of the courtyard, not two feet from the daycare workers. A third child, a little girl with a long blond ponytail down her back, who might have been Mayday's twin except for the hair-color, was hanging back from them, trying to look as though she weren't listening to what they were saying.

But after a few more frustrating minutes of this uncertainty, Peter's luck began to change. Mayday and her friend Travis and the little blond girl whose name he couldn't remember turned and headed toward the monkey bars. Then two children near the swings began arguing about something and shoving each other, and one of the counsellors rushed over to settle their dispute. The other one watched her go for a moment, and then walked over to the big tree to join the rest in the shade.

_Yes!_ He was in business. Surreptitiously, he reached down and crawled around the corner of the school building to the side that faced the street. Remembering his earlier embarrassment at the suspicions of an overzealous caregiver, he shuddered mentally at the thought that his desire to please his daughter, to be a hero for her, could end ignominiously in a worse humiliation, with him being kicked off the school grounds in front of her, this time as Spider-Man. Then, mentally bracing himself, he looked up and down the nearby road, watching a delivery van make its slow way around the corner. As soon as it was gone he cast a hasty web line, which caught a brownstone apartment building, and launched himself swiftly across the street, towards a long low building – a supermarket? – that faced the school.

Alighting on its gravelly roof, he rapidly skidded behind the oversized sign, and then peeked around it at the school. He couldn't see the children now, but he could see the top of the high brick wall that guarded them, and hear the echoes of their excited voices. Three cars drove by while he tried to decide how to get across the broad four lane street unseen. It was too wide for him to be able to jump directly onto the wall even with a running start, and swinging across would be awkward because there was nothing high enough for him to snag nearby – and then he noticed a set of high telephone poles, one on his side, and one across the street, right beside the corner of the courtyard wall.

Maybe, if he was quick ... as soon as the thought crossed his mind, he leapt onto the nearby telephone pole, rapidly scaled it almost to the top, and sent out a webline that snagged the other pole. Then, as the light changed down the street, releasing a line of waiting cars, he dove off his pole, heading not for the corresponding telephone pole, but the school wall beside it. He landed lightly on the outside face of it, near the top. Peering over, he oriented himself with the monkey bars, and began rapidly crawling along the wall until he was right beside them.

What a joke, a grown man in red and blue lycra breaking into a school yard in the middle of the afternoon, and acting as though it were some kind of stealth operation. He felt like a dork. He knew he'd always had a knack for embarrassing himself, but fatherhood had certainly led him to some new lows.

"-- Spider-Man!" he could hear a boy's voice declaring. He started, thinking for a minute that he must have been spotted by the kids, until he heard Mayday's bright voice pipe up in response, "If you're Spider-Man, then I get to be a supervillain." Huh. How weird was it to hear kids, among them his own daughter, pretending to be him, and making plans to play out his battles?

"-- wanna be? Doc Ock? The Green Goblin?" Mayday's companion was asking.

"Nah," came Mayday's voice, "I'm gonna be the Lizard. I've got sharp teeth and claws and I'm gonna bite you." She actually made little growling sounds. Peter felt a bit bemused to hear her. Maybe she hadn't been as traumatized by the Lizard as he'd feared. Or maybe this was some new way of dealing with it, now that she'd articulated her memories to her parents. Intrigued, he pulled himself up onto the top of the wall, which was only about six inches wide. He crouched there silently and watched his small daughter nimbly reach the top of the monkey bars.

She was an amazingly good climber for a child who was not quite eight, he thought, frowning a little beneath his mask. Then again, she always had been. He recalled that she could climb out of her crib before she'd been able to walk; he'd often find her standing on the floor beside her crib, holding herself upright by hanging onto its bars. She'd chortle with happiness when he'd come into the room, scoop her up and put her back in, making him suspect that she'd only gotten out of the crib in the first place to get her parents' attention. Once or twice, in sheer frustration, he'd resorted to creating a mesh web of very fine, almost invisible strands, and stretching it over the top of the crib, just to keep her in her bed.

A new group of children had showed up at the monkey bars in the meantime. To decrease his chances of being noticed before he was ready, he stretched himself out comfortably along the narrow top of the wall, waiting for an opportune moment to break into the conversation. He still really hoped that he wouldn't frighten any of these kids when they finally saw him.

" -- just a big fake," a kid was saying in a sneering voice. Peter's ears perked up.

"Is not!" his daughter was insisting. She was adorable standing upright on the monkey bars with her fists clenched like that. With all that long, red hair, she looked an awful lot like a miniature version of her mother when she was mad.

"Is he the one with the red and blue tights?" a curly-haired little fellow was asking.

"Oh yeah," said the dark-haired boy who was sitting on the monkey bars next to Mayday, snapping his fingers, "I forgot about the stupid suit. It's kind of a rip-off of Superman, doncha think, with those colors?"

He couldn't have asked for such a good opportunity unless he'd created it himself. _That's my cue,_ Spider-Man thought, a bit nervously.

End of Part III

_A/N_: _Constructive criticism is always useful and much appreciated. Or, if you simply want to tell me that you liked it, that would be good too._ _Thanks for reading!_


	4. Chapter 4: Conversations on a Playground

**Mayday's Hero**

Part IV of V

_Disclaimer: This story is work of fanfiction, which means that the characters of Mayday and Peter Parker don't belong to me (more's the pity -- I would never have killed off baby May if they did). _;)_  
_

_A/N:_ _Just one more chapter to go. Thank you again to jjonahjameson for some good hints pertaining to the playground scenes here. Thanks also to those who've read my story and reviewed it so favorably; your reviews keep me writing. _

Mayday could not believe her eyes. Right in front of her, stretched out casually on the top of the school wall, was her hero, the one and only Spider-Man. "Is it really you?" she asked excitedly.

"As large as life, and twice as natural," joked the costumed super-hero. His voice was just as cheery as Mayday remembered. She crouched down, turned, and began clambering rapidly down the side of the monkey bars closest to the wall. Meanwhile, the other kids, who'd been momentarily paralyzed into little statues, resumed animation all at once.

Janeen and Angela squealed like scared rabbits, and clutched at each other. "Shut up!" Angela's brother hissed, nudging her. "I want to see what happens."

"Whoa!" said Travis at the same moment from the top of the monkey bars. To Mayday's ears, he actually sounded impressed.

"No way," said Kendall sceptically an instant later. "It's a trick. It's just some guy in a costume."

"Some guy who's _lying on top of a wall_," Mayday responded scathingly from the side of the monkey bars. She was about halfway to the ground by now, and she jumped quickly down from bars and marched right up to her hero.

Spider-Man was amused at the difference between his fearless little true believer and the other kids with their varied and disconcerted responses. "I know you're not just some guy," Mayday said confidentially, looking up trustingly into the opaquely reflective lenses of his masked eyes.

He leaned down toward her. "I promise you, I am the one and only, accept-no-substitutes, Amazing Spider-Man," he said jovially to her and her alone.

Mayday beamed at him. She found it a strange sight, seeing him reclining on the narrow top of a wall as if he hadn't a care in the world, but, even so, he was just like she thought he'd be – colorful, cheery, larger than life. Wait till she told Mom and Dad about _this_. She was sure that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her in her short young life.

At these words, the other kids were struck silent again for a moment. But only for a moment. "What're you doing here?" the irrepressible Travis asked in wonder. "Shouldn't you be out somewhere saving somebody?"

_Good question, kid_, thought Spider-Man wryly, wishing he'd bothered to think of some sort of plausible semi-coherent reason for being at a school. _Maybe I should be_. He felt a pang. "Uh ... I was in the neighborhood," he said aloud, feeling oddly exposed despite the fact that he was wearing his mask, "doing hero stuff ... and I heard my name being bandied about. I guess I was curious to hear what you were saying." Did that sound as dumb to them as it did to him?

"I still don't believe it," said the other boy crossly, although he sounded a lot less confident than he had a moment before. "How do we know that you're not wearing a special suit, like with tiny little suction cups on it or something?" An elfin-looking blond girl with a sulky expression on her face nodded her head sharply at this comment.

"Oh yeah," Travis said, rolling his eyes at Mayday. "Tiny _invisible _suction cups." Mayday laughed, an amused gurgle. Travis could be annoying sometimes, but at other times, like now, he could also be really funny.

"Hey, no one says you have to believe in me, kid; it's up to you," Spider-Man said to the chubby black-haired boy, suppressing a chuckle himself at that comment from Mayday's friend, who evidently had the same sarcastic sense of humor as Mayday herself.

Then, remembering Mayday's complaint about her friends, he had a thought. "But maybe this will help," he added. With a soft thwip he triggered webs from both his wrists, and in no time at all he had spun a web ladder that reached from the bottom of the wall, just a few feet from where he was sitting, to the domed top of the monkey bars, where he made sure that it wound tightly around all the three sides of one of the triangles facing the wall. To make the ladder absolutely safe, he anchored it with one more fine, nearly invisible web line to the brickwork beside him.

The whole time he was spinning this web, he felt more than a bit ridiculous, like a clown at a birthday party doing tricks for the kids, twisting balloons into poodles or elephants and making stupid jokes.

Mayday clapped her hands, jumping up and down, and ran eagerly over to web ladder. She was thrilled to the core by the remarkable, delicate, pearlescent structure, which she began climbing on immediately. In no time, she was right up at the top of the monkey bars again.

Spider-Man watched her go, suddenly more pleased than embarrassed. "Was your mom a spider?" a curly haired boy asked him curiously, speaking up for the first time and breaking into his thoughts.

"Uh ... no," Spider-Man responded abstractedly. He pulled his gaze away from his nimble daughter and scanned the playground again, afraid that this last foolish stunt would finally get him noticed. He kept his eyes peeled for the counsellors but, incredibly, they were still chatting amongst themselves under the tree, leaving him and the children undisturbed. He frowned. Boy, he was going to have to speak to MJ about just how beneficial this afterschool program they'd enrolled Mayday in really was.

"Do you eat flies?" Travis piped up, casting a sly look at Mayday, who was nearly finished climbing up the web ladder toward him.

Mayday giggled at that, and Spider-Man smiled beneath his mask. It was obvious to him why these two hung around together, because that was exactly the sort of question his practical daughter would be likely to ask herself. "I'm partial to chili dogs, myself," he said confidentially to the boy. "But, you know, it's easier to be a hero if you eat healthy food."

"Oh, brother," Travis grimaced. "You sound just like my teacher or my mom," he complained. "Next you'll say that everyone can be a hero."

"Travis, _shush_!" admonished Mayday, although privately she thought he did have a point. Even though he was absolutely awesome, Spider-Man had just said exactly the kind of thing that most grown-ups tended to say to kids. She thought she almost would have preferred it if he did eat flies – now that would've been _neat_. Freaky, but neat.

"Well, that's true, actually," said Spider-Man, sounding to Mayday like he was trying to keep from laughing under his mask. Then, when Mayday and Travis groaned simultaneously, he added hastily, "I was going to say that believing in heroes might lead you to become one yourself someday, but you know ... chili dogs never hurt anyone either, so maybe you can, uh, do both ... have fun while learning to be a hero, I mean."

The way the two of them exchanged glances told Peter that they thought this strategic retreat was almost as lame as what he'd said before. For a second, he was rather glad his face was covered; it was probably nearly as red as his mask. Who would've thought that a couple of kids could be such a tough crowd?

Meanwhile, the other children, except for a sullen, miserable-looking Janeen, had all gathered round the springy webbing, touching and pulling and tugging at the coiled rope-like strands. "It boings," said Angela to Mayday in a pleased voice, pulling, stretching and then releasing one side of the web, and watching as it bounced back into place.

"Cool," said Eric. "I thought it'd be sticky," said Kendall, with distaste in his voice. "It's bouncy," Travis said happily as he began climbing on it too.

Peter had never done anything quite like this before, and he was feeling increasingly befuddled. Evoking excited responses from these kids was a far cry from webbing up thugs, catching falling people in webnets, or weaving rope ladders to bring the terrified victims of disasters to safety. Then he noticed with a touch of pride that his small, agile daughter was already climbing effortlessly back down the webbing again. In fact, all of the kids, even the black haired sceptic, were either gathered around the web ladder, or climbing up it, or pulling vigorously on it.

All, that is, except for the blond girl with the pony-tail like Mayday's, who hung back from the others and continually cast little agate eyes at him. _Something wrong there_, Peter thought helplessly, troubled and frowning behind his mask. He wondered uneasily if he should leave now; after all, he'd dropped in, he'd made Mayday's day, and what else was there to do?

After a minute, the little blonde girl finally spoke to him. "We're not supposed to talk to strangers," she said in a chilly, brittle voice. "I'm gonna call a teacher." A couple of the kids stopped climbing, and looked over at her in surprise.

"Whoa, wait a minute, little lady," said Spider-Man quickly. Unconsciously he pulled himself up into a crouching position on the top of the wall, tense and poised to leap away. He raised his gloved hands in an appeasing manner. "I just stopped by to say hello."

But before he could say or do anything further, two alarming things happened at the same time. First, all of a sudden, he heard an irate "Hey!" from across the yard, as he was apparently spotted at last by the one of the oblivious caregivers, who also alerted her counterparts. The kids all looked around as three adults began running toward them in consternation. And then, barely a split second later, his spider-sense flared almost painfully in warning – not in response to the approaching daycare workers, he realized, but in response to something, some awful thing, that was pulling him like a magnet off in the general direction of the city blocks behind the school. _Well, that's convenient_, he thought wryly as he stood up.

"Gotta go," said Spider-Man in haste to the kids, grateful to have something that he knew how to respond to for once, not to mention relieved to have a reason to escape the indignation of the children's protectors. He turned to leave, and then he paused for a brief instant. "See you," he said directly to Mayday, who was looking up at him with a heart-wrenching expression of disappointment on her pixie face. Then, his spider-sense pulsating intensely inside his skull, he ran swiftly along the top of the wall, throwing his former caution about being spotted near the school to the wind as he built up momentum to swing out over the playground.

Feeling a mixture of unhappiness and wonder, Mayday watched as Spider-Man caught a light pole with his web and flipped his body straight up into the air, launching himself upward with enough strength and speed that he landed right on the sloping roof of the school. Faintly, in the distance, she heard the exclamations of surprise from some of the children on the other side of the playground as they noticed him for the first time. Then, scrambling agilely up the peaked roof, he disappeared over the other side of school and was gone from her sight.

* * *

"Who was that? What's going on?" gasped out one of the program counsellors, a short, stout blond woman named Lydie, after arriving breathlessly on the scene. The other two, a thin, lanky brown-skinned college student, and the middle-aged director of the program had stopped to watch Spider-Man bound over the school roof and disappear. Once he had, they followed the first daycare worker to the children. 

"Spider-Man," said Janeen, still looking furious. "He did that." She pointed at the web.

"Get off, get off, children; it's not safe," urged Lydie hurriedly, gazing fearfully toward the school as if she were afraid that Spider-Man would attack them from that direction.

"You know, Hartaj, I thought he had retired," the middle-aged director, Pam, was murmuring to the lanky student in an awed voice. Both of them looked back towards the school roof again. "Oh sure, you hear about him from time to time, but I thought it was nothing serious ... just like those Elvis sightings in the tabloids ..."

Meanwhile, Lydie was herding the children in front of her, away from the monkey bars. "Better come with us, and stay near the other children," she was saying nervously, still looking all around her.

Mayday felt impatient. Everyone _knew_ Spider-Man was a hero, not scary at all. Not to mention the fact that, when the children were all outside, most of the time the counsellors paid almost no attention to them, unless someone got hurt or started a fight. It was unfair that the one time they didn't want the adults' attention, now they had to put up with it. Of course that little _sneak_, that tattle-tale Janeen, wasn't helping either.

"Best come along, children," said Pam, when she noticed a few stragglers hanging back. The lanky girl, Hartaj, had gone over to inspect the web, and after shooing Mayday, Travis and Eric in the general direction of the others, she went over to it as well. "I wonder what he was doing here," Mayday heard the student mutter to Pam in a low voice. For some reason, the fact that the teachers got to stay behind by the web made her even angrier than she was already. She shoved her way forward past Angela and Kendall, who looked at her in surprise, and grabbed Janeen by the arm, pulling her off to the side.

Mayday had never been so furious in her short life as she was with Janeen at this very moment. "How dare you, Janeen Marysia Gerlach!" she shouted. "You're a traitor, and a tattle-tale, and I'll never _ever_ speak to you again." Her small hand clenched itself into an upraised fist without her even realizing that it had. She glowered menacingly at her adversary.

"Fight, fight, fight," whispered a mischievous voice gleefully. Mayday turned a blazing look on Travis until he subsided, trudging off after the others, and then she returned her glare to her one-time best friend.

Janeen glared back at Mayday just as fiercely and defended herself. "He shouldn't have been here," she insisted, folding her slim arms. "Plus, he's lame."

"What're you talking about?" snapped Mayday, "Didn't you see how he zipped away? And he's real even though _you_ said he wasn't." She paused for a reply, but Janeen was giving her the silent treatment again. It made Mayday madder than ever.

After a moment, Mayday continued passionately, "_I_ think it's great we got to meet Spider-Man. He talked to us, he even spun us a web ... until _you_ ruined it." She stopped a second time and swallowed hard, because her anger and hurt were nearly choking her. "I thought you liked Spider-Man," Mayday accused at last, her voice cracking a little, "And instead you chased him off."

Janeen looked away and shrugged. "I guess I don't any more." Then she turned hard grey eyes back on Mayday. "You know, he's not such a hero."

"He _saved_ me and my mom!"

"Yeah, well, he doesn't save everybody!" retorted Janeen. She glared back at Mayday, until, after a few seconds, her small, pointy faced crumpled, fell ... and all at once she burst into tears.

Mayday hesitated a moment, completely floored. Her anger disappeared and was replaced by confusion and uneasiness. Dimly, she perceived that not only was Janeen acting very oddly today, but that she had been for the last while, in fact. She didn't know what it meant that normally Janeen never cried, she never tattled, and she never badmouthed Spider-Man, and now she was doing them all.

Janeen sobbed some more, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. Then, unable to stand the uncertainty an instant longer, Mayday instinctively did something that Mommy, Daddy and Aunt May always did whenever she felt so bad that she couldn't help crying herself. She put both her arms around Janeen and hugged her. For an instant, Janeen twisted in Mayday's hug, but Mayday was too strong for her and held on tight, until she soon stopped struggling and put her own arms around Mayday as well. She snuffled miserably on Mayday's shoulder for a few moments. "Why wasn't he there? Why didn't he save her?" she wept.

"Save who?" asked Mayday, releasing her friend and looking wonderingly at Janeen.

"My cousin," mumbled Janeen. She looked down, and swiped at her wet eyes with the heel of a grubby hand. "You know, Chantal..."

Comprehension started to dawn. Mayday knew that Janeen's cousin Chantal had been killed in a car accident while crossing the street to catch her school bus in front of her school about two months ago. Janeen had told her about it one morning at recess, and then Mommy had taken her to the funeral home a few days later.

Mayday had been more bewildered than sad about the death of Janeen's cousin, even though she'd met Chantal a few times at Janeen's place during playdates and birthday parties, along with many others from among Janeen's numerous cousins. She remembered that Chantal had looked almost like a duplicate of Janeen, being just as blond, just as impish and just as silly. Mayday had liked her, except for the fact that Chantal had pretended to have difficulty remembering Mayday's name, slyly calling her names like Marigold, Maybell, and Madison whenever she had got the chance.

Mayday hadn't known what to say on the day when Janeen had first told her about Chantal during recess. She hadn't known what to say, either, on the day when Mommy had taken her over to see the small closed white coffin, which had Chantal's smiling picture and some flowers on top of it. Janeen's mother and her aunts had all been crying and hugging each other, while Janeen had stood, white-faced, a little apart from them. When Mom had taken Janeen's hand and spoken softly to her, Janeen had remained silent, so Mayday thought she should remain silent too.

And, once more, she didn't know what to say now.

"It's not fair," said Janeen forlornly, her eyes like two pearly grey puddles. "He's saved you, he's saved lots of people. Why couldn't he have saved her?"

Mayday furrowed her brow in confusion. This was the first time she'd come across somebody who had died because Spider-Man hadn't saved her. "Maybe he was off saving someone else," she offered half-heartedly. She thought about Spider-Man picking her and her mom up on that long ago afternoon, and then, today, running swiftly along the wall, bounding over the school and disappearing to who knew where. She groped after something, some half-formed idea. Everyone was always telling her to do the best she could; maybe that's all Spider-Man did too. "I guess he can't save everybody," she finally admitted aloud. "He's only one guy."

"I guess," acknowledged Janeen. She was drying her tears, this time with the hem of her shirt. She eyed Mayday. "I'm sorry I was so mean."

"It's okay," said Mayday uncomfortably. "I'm sorry 'bout Chantal."

"You wanna go play with Travis?" asked Janeen.

"Sure," said Mayday with relief. She was finding all this emotional stuff really overwhelming.

End of Part IV

_A/N: Why not feed a poor, struggling fanfic author's starving ego and review? It'd sure be nice ..._


	5. Chapter 5: Ordinary Hero

**Mayday's Hero**

Part V of V

_Disclaimer: _ _As I explain below, the situations, characters and setting of this story are not my own – they belong to Marvel, and the various writers and artists who work for the company. I'm only borrowing them, and trying to give credit where credit's due. It's fanfiction after all; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The epigraph to pt. 2 is from Thom Stark._

_A/N:_ _The villain in this chapter and Spider-Man's clever strategy for defeating him, are both filched from a comic that I haven't even read, ASM #501. (I did read a bunch of reviews and summaries of it, though). His stupid name was sort of my idea, but not really. And yes, he's supposed to be idiotic. I wanted a time-consuming villain, dangerous and horribly destructive, but one who was, to Spider-Man, more annoying than threatening; this guy fit the bill perfectly. The nameless hotel manager is my own invention._ _Oh, and the idea of a potential lawsuit against Spidey derives from that brilliant superhero movie, the créme de la créme of all superhero movies, The Incredibles_. _Now, onto the last part ..._

Spider-Man was exhausted. He'd been at it for over an hour, since the bank, and he still hadn't figured out how to stop this idiot. He was some lamebrain who'd stolen a prototype mining suit from GlobalCore Technologies, a resonating suit that allowed a single person to tunnel deep underground and literally core out the earth as he or she went. It worked, he remembered reading in a scientific journal, by using a rotating combination of high and low frequency pulse vibrations that could pulverize rock like powder. 

When he'd originally read about the prototype, Peter had thought hopefully about the potentially positive applications of a series of mining suits like it for impoverished countries lacking the equipment to find and use their own natural resources. It was supposed to be environmentally-friendly too. But no, instead of allowing the suit to be a potentially liberating force, something good and useful, _this_ blockhead had stolen it, and then tried to use it to rob a bank only a few blocks from Mayday's school.

First, he'd bored up through the bank's foundation, causing a wall to collapse almost on the heads of a crowd of bank customers and tellers. Arriving nearly a moment too late, Spider-Man had managed to hold it up long enough for everyone to get out from underneath, but he thought that the building itself was probably a write off, given how much the foundation had been destabilized.

To add insult to injury, a few exchanged barbs revealed that this dope was going around calling himself by a ridiculous, unimaginative name: "The Pulverizer." He supposed he should thank his lucky stars the guy hadn't decided to call himself "The Vibrater" since that appeared to about the level of intelligence the moron possessed. Boy, that'd be just what he needed, for word to get around that Spider-Man had come out of hiding to fight some guy called "The Vibrater." People would never stop laughing.

Chased from the bank, the jerk had next smashed straight through the steel, glass and concrete of a skyscraper in the last stages of construction. After receiving a few useless punches from Spider-Man, which failed to do anything more than knock him on his backside, the idiot then vibrated his way up onto the roof of a fancy hotel next door. As he went over the top, he caused parts of the ornamental facade to fall in huge chunks toward the busy street below. Racing after him up the side of the building, Spider-Man had just managed to catch the substantial mass of broken stone and brickwork in a webnet as it plunged past him, but its weight had stretched his muscles painfully, strained his joints and then yanked him right off the side of the building to plummet towards the street many stories below.

Fortunately as he fell he had the presence of mind, or the good luck, to anchor himself to an overhang of the adjacent building, the one that was still under construction, with another one of his webs. Then he was able to swing himself to and fro, using the excruciating weight of a half a ton of masonry to give force to his arcs, until he managed, just barely, to bring the contents of his net back up and around, burying his opponent in a crushing heap of rubble. Luckily the roof of the hotel appeared to sustain the impact of all that limestone, but unfortunately it only took about twenty seconds for his adversary to vibrate his way out from under the immense pile of stone that Spider-Man had dropped on him.

Too bad you didn't have to be smart in order to hurt people, Spider-Man thought sardonically. If it were a law of the universe that a minimum level of intelligence was required before you could start doing any serious damage, criminals and bullies would be much rarer than they were.

The Pulverizer swiftly bored his way back down the front of the historic hotel, making it virtually certain that the old, decorative building would shortly be slated for demolition too, and Spider-Man lost his temper. He realized that unconsciously he'd been herding the wacko in the opposite direction from Mayday's school, and that if he'd just stood by and let him rob the bank, the idiot would have destroyed only one building, instead of two, or possibly three. He was almost certainly making the situation worse by prolonging this dumbass's activity. It had to stop _now_, before somebody, or quite possibly, many people, really got hurt.

He launched himself off the side of the building and landed a few feet in front of the guy in the bulky suit.

"Care to dance?" he inquired, before picking his oscillating opponent up around the waist. Sweet mother in heaven, he'd never experienced such throbbing pain. He could actually feel his bones beginning to fracture, his muscles starting to unweave and his teeth grinding at the terrific pressure caused by the suit's ceaseless vibrations. Unable to hold his adversary any longer, Spider-Man hurled him back toward the base of the construction site. At least that building was more or less unoccupied, except for the construction crew, who had, please God, stopped work when they'd heard the destruction going on next door.

The mechanical mining outfit hit the bottom of the skyscraper with a crack like thunder, and the man inside the suit lay there stunned for an instant, while the suit mindlessly vibrated a huge hole in the concrete beneath and beside him. Gritting his teeth against the pain of multiple pulled muscles, Spider-Man gingerly approached to look for the suit's off-switch. Unfortunately, the moment that he spotted it, on the guy's shoulder, beside the seam connecting metallic helmet with the neck of the suit, the guy opened his eyes and bounded back onto his feet as though he had springs in his boots.

"Thanks for getting that kink out of my back," Spider-Man managed to wheeze out through the agonizing pain in his ribs as they squared off once more. "You're like a lethal new kind of chiropractor."

"You can't stop me!" the guy calling himself The Pulverizer snarled back, his voice weirdly distorted and amplified through the suit's electronics. "These vibrations won't quit until the suit is turned off!" With that, he turned his back on Spider-Man, jumped like a hideous, giant metallic grasshopper in the opposite direction, and began to bore back through a load-bearing wall of the busy hotel.

_Naturally_, thought Spider-Man in frustration. _Yep, let's duke this out in a densely populated area, why don't we? _He wracked his brains as he leaped through the hole in the wall, and then through another large hole, which the Pulverizer had just created in the floor of the hotel's posh lobby. Time was passing, little Mayday was waiting for him, and, most important of all, people were sure to get hurt any minute now. It was only a matter of time before this mini-megalomaniac brought a building down on the heads of a crowd of people. That cretin inside the suit had no plan; he was letting it do all the work. There had to be a way to use that suit against him somehow.

He landed on his feet, and found himself in the hotel's pool and spa area. Several scantily-clad screaming patrons fled past him as an idea emerged.

"That's right!" the Pulverizer shouted after some more fleeing bathing beauties. He was standing on the edge of an enormous swimming pool. "Run! Run and tell everyone that The Pulverizer's here, and he's going to pulverize your buildings, your houses, your city ... pulverize them into dust!"

"What makes you so hostile?" snapped Spider-Man. "You had an unhappy childhood or something?" Inwardly, he could scarcely believe the opportunity that he'd just been handed on a silver platter. He approached quickly.

"You quit following me," the guy in the suit said menacingly, "Or I'll pulverize _you_!"

"Oh, that's original," said Spider-Man with mild sarcasm as he unleashed a well-aimed punch right at the loser's reinforced helmet. It contained just enough force to knock him backwards into the pool.

"What're you doing?" cried the guy incredulously, surfacing and standing up in the pool's shallow end. "This suit is waterproof! That move's going to get you nothing, buddy!" The water around him began to swish and froth ominously.

"Oh, I'm so glad you asked," Spider-Man said cheerfully. "What I'm doing is giving _you_ a lecture on geology. Now pay attention. You know what causes tsunamis? Seismic activity on the ocean floor creates vibrations of high enough amplitude and frequency to set the water in motion. So ... guess what will happen when such vibrations occur in a closed environment?"

As he spoke, a succession of waves began to rise up from either end of the pool, hammering into its only occupant from opposite ends at the same moment. "Ow!" he exclaimed as they started to pummel him from all sides. "Hey, stop it, that hurts!"

Spider-Man smiled grimly beneath his mask. "Yes, you get the gold star!" he crowed. "A series of massive waves will keep clobbering you over and over until someone helps you turn off your equipment. It'll feel like a ton of bricks being dropped on your head every second."

"Oww!" wailed the hapless swimmer. "Stop it, please stop it! I surrender!"

Spider-Man simply folded his arms. Let him see what it felt like to have the teeth practically rattled out of your head and your bones shaken apart at the joints. That suit would protect its inhabitant from any truly serious damage, and he would turn it off ... in a minute. Sheesh, his whole body ached from his own experience of holding onto that damn vibrating suit for just a few seconds. What he wouldn't give for another hot bath and one of MJ's massages right about now.

"You know, he just surrendered," said a cultured voice from somewhere in the back of him. Spider-Man turned to see the hotel manager striding up rapidly from behind. He was a lean middle-aged man in a crisply tailored, well-cut navy suit, with a gleaming gold nameplate pinned on his smart lapel.

"I heard him," Spider-Man responded calmly, raising his voice a bit so that he could be heard over the increasing din of the smacking waves of water. The hotel manager came and stood next to him, surveying the severe damage that had been done to the ceiling and the side wall.

"You should have stayed in retirement," the manager commented as he looked around at the broken tiles, fragments of plaster and exposed wiring decorating the room. "My company is going to sue the pants off of you."

He would hardly have believed it could be possible, but Spider-Man became even more annoyed than he was already. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered. Not that he was worried about a lawsuit – people threatened them regularly, but no one had as yet launched any against him personally. There were so many other convenient targets, like the criminals themselves, or the city. Heck, the hotel would be sued before he was. No, he was irked that he'd strained all his muscles, wasted precious time he could have spent with his cute daughter, and, as usual, received nothing, not even a thank you, in return.

"Listen, I'm not the one who put on a destructive mining suit in the middle of New York," Spider-Man retorted. "Tell your proprietors to sue the homicidal creep who started this whole mess."

The hotel manager raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, I know what you did here! I'm just saying."

Spider-Man decided it was time to put an end to this pointless conversation. "You got the time?" he asked impatiently.

"The time?" said the hotel manager, looking a bit bemused. He pulled back a neatly tailored sleeve. "Uh, it's 5:45. Why, you got a date?"

_Yikes_! thought Spider-Man, grimacing beneath his mask at the thought of his scared, abandoned daughter sitting all by herself at the playground in the company of a couple of irate caregivers. The afterschool program ran until six, but they usually managed to pick Mayday up around 5 pm. The poor kid had to be wondering where her family was by now.

"As a matter of fact I do," Spider-Man replied shortly over his shoulder as he headed quickly toward the pool.

* * *

_He was an ordinary hero. Just the regular kind._

_An ordinary hero, when heroes were hard to find. _

Mayday was perched on the top of the monkey bars again. It was fast becoming her favorite place to sit. The top of the slide was higher, but anyone could climb the spiraling metallic stairs leading up to it.

In contrast to her lonesome mood the day before, this afternoon Mayday was content to be by herself. Janeen and Travis had both been collected by their moms already, but for some unknown reason no one had come to get her yet. She wasn't too worried about it, though. Someone always came eventually, usually too soon for her liking. In the meantime, she was getting to have the monkey bars all to herself ... along with Spider-Man's amazing web ladder, which, although it was looking more and more fragile every minute, was still gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Just after he'd swung off, Lydie had stubbornly taken a giant pair of garden shears and tried to cut it down, only to wind up breaking the clippers themselves in two. Then she'd told all the children that they daren't go on the web ladder, on the grounds it was unsafe, and that the monkey bars were off limits for the rest of the afternoon too. Mayday was glad that Lydie had to leave early today, because the other grownups didn't bother enforcing her ban on the monkey bars after she'd gone.

Earlier, Mayday and the other kids had wrapped up the Princess Power game from the day before. Then, once Angela, her brother and Kendall had left for the day, Mayday, Janeen and Travis spent practically the rest of the time running after each other. To an outsider, it might have looked like a game of tag, but, in fact, they had been playing a rousing game of Spider-Man whaling on bad guys. The game mainly involved Travis chasing Janeen and Mayday alternately, with one or two surprise ambushes when the two girls had joined forces to gang up on him. Mayday had found it a little maddening that there had been a perfectly good web ladder over by the monkey bars, totally unused, which they hadn't been allowed to go near – but they'd had fun anyway.

Now that same extraordinary web was dwindling into slender little wisps and the school yard was nearly deserted. There were only about a half a dozen unclaimed kids left, playing on the swings and the slide. Two caregivers were still hanging out under the tree, waiting impatiently for any remaining parents to pick up the kids so that they could go home.

Mayday was also glad to be sitting alone on the monkey bars because she was feeling a little overwhelmed as she mulled over the stunning events of the afternoon – namely, Spider-Man and Janeen's cousin. Thanks to Janeen, she had begun to wonder why Spider-Man had been there to save Mayday and her mom that one day, but _hadn't _been there to save Chantal another day. Up until today she'd thought that Spider-Man would inevitably appear at just the right moment whenever anyone needed him. After all, he had yanked her and Mommy practically right out of the Lizard's clutching claws. Wasn't it the hero's job to show up in the nick of time? Mayday furrowed her brow and looked down at her aimlessly swinging feet in their clean white sneakers and brightly colored laces. Could it really be true that the good guys, the heroes, didn't always manage to save the day? Despite the fact that only this afternoon she'd seen with her own eyes that Spider-Man was everything she remembered – friendly, larger than life, colorful and incredibly fast – she was feeling forlorn at the moment, as though her hero had lost a little of his luster.

Then something tightened in her chest as part of her rebelled at the idea of giving up on Spider-Man. Surely it was a good thing that heroes still saved the day some of the time? Surely that must count for something? Maybe even a hero like Spider-Man couldn't save everybody all the time, so maybe, sorta like Mayday herself, he just did the best he could, in between eating chili dogs and yucky green vegetables, and giving out typically grown up advice to kids in school yards before rushing off to save the day for somebody else.

Anyway, he was _real_ and she had really seen him. A bubble of happiness welled up inside at the thought.

Mayday closed her eyes and tried to call up a mental picture of him standing tall on the top of the courtyard wall. Suddenly, though, she was distracted by the sound of quick footsteps crunching across the gravel toward her. She opened her eyes.

"You again!" said Mayday delightedly when she saw who was approaching. She got to her feet on top of the monkey bars, held out her arms, wiggling her fingers, and, after a second, jumped. Her dad caught her easily and set her on her feet, ruffling her bangs. "Hey, kiddo," he said by way of a greeting. "I'm sorry I'm so late."

"What happened to you?" Mayday asked, scrutinizing her father. He was looking even more rumpled and disheveled than usual, and his normally thick brown hair appeared to be damp.

Her father made a face. "I got a bit messed up at a construction site I happened to be passing through. It was near a pool, and ... well, it's a long story." With a cheerful smile, he offered his hand and Mayday slipped hers confidingly into it. The two of them began to walk back to the big shade tree at the other end of the school yard to check in with a daycare worker and to sign Mayday out in the big book.

"It's okay that you were late," said Mayday, giving him a sunny smile in return. "I was having so much fun I didn't want to go home before now anyway." Then she grew worried. "How come you're here again? Is Aunt May still sick?"

Dad shook his head. "No, she was actually feeling much more like her normal self when I talked to her at lunchtime," he replied. "But I told her that I wanted to pick you up myself again today." As he spoke, he kept looking at Mayday sideways, as though he were waiting for something.

Mayday gave her father a sly look. "Does that mean more ice cream?" she asked hopefully.

Dad just looked back at her. "Did you have another bad day today?" he challenged.

Mayday dimpled. "No, I had an _amazing_ day. Dad, you'll never guess who I met."

Her father cast his eyes down at his shoes and smiled a small, secretive smile. "Oh, you never know." Then he looked back into her face, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he grinned at her. "If it's so impossible for me to guess, why don't you save us both time and tell me about it?" His eyes were warmer and bluer than the sky.

Mayday took a deep breath, hardly able to contain her giddiness. "Spider-Man!" she whispered excitedly.

"You're kidding!" said Dad, widening his eyes almost comically in surprise. "Now, how did you happen to meet him – was he doing something heroic?"

"Nah," Mayday said. "He stopped to say hello, and spun us a web to play on." At that instant, they reached the big oak tree. A bored counsellor handed Dad the daybook and he wrote in it for a minute before handing it back to her with a polite smile. While her dad was busy with the book, Mayday went over to the wall and picked up her backpack, sliding her arms through it to put it on. Not too far away, a tower clock struck six o'clock. As Dad took her hand again to lead her out of the school yard, Mayday mentally counted off the gongs.

"So," said Dad, giving her yet another quick sidelong look, "What did you think of him?" He seemed like he was keen to hear her answer.

"Oh, he's _awesome_, even more cool up close than ever, Dad," Mayday confided. "Not 'cause of anything he said – he talks pretty much like any old grown-up, y'know – but just 'cause of who he is."

As they were walking, Dad began absently running his thumb back and forth over the line of tiny calluses, the result of all her climbing, on the center of Mayday's palm. He looked thoughtful for a minute before glancing down at her with another warm smile. "And who is that?" he inquired. She liked that about Dad. Unlike her busy teacher and some other grownups she'd encountered, he always looked like he was really interested in what you were saying. And he cared about things like heroes, monsters and cartoons.

"Well, he's nice," said Mayday candidly. "And he's _neat_. At the end he just zoomed away, like – Whoosh!" She used her free hand to demonstrate the whooshing motion. "He's kinda ordinary too," she added, remembering the irritating comment about healthy food. "But he's still a hero anyway."

Dad gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Yes, I guess so," he agreed quietly as they walked through the open gates of the school courtyard.

The End

_A/N: Thanks for reading! _

_A/N (6/23/05): Not that I'm complaining or anything, but I do find it funny that this story has received 300 hits since it went up (yay!) and 15 reviews (thanks again to all of you who reviewed); I'm glad people are reading it, but I'd also love to know what you think of the story. If you have a moment, please consider reviewing.  
_


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